Toymaker, The (20 page)

Dark had already fallen when Koenig finally woke Mathias. He had let him sleep all day, but even then it wasn’t enough. Mathias might have slept on for hours yet. Still on the edge of that deeply drugged sleep, uncomplaining, he allowed himself to be dressed and wrapped in his coat. Then, with a burning flare to light their way, Koenig led them through the cold streets. There was ice underfoot. Katta walked beside Mathias with her arm through
his. She wasn’t sure if he was really awake; he was walking as though in a dream. Stefan walked on the other side of her. She didn’t like the feeling of that at all, but there was nothing she could do about it. Koenig didn’t speak. She could see his face set hard in the light of the flare, and wondered what it was that he was thinking.

She recognized some of the streets – The Bear, the street where she’d had to run from the man. Then it was all new. They crossed the small bridge into the dark narrow court that led to the house where Jacob lived. The candles in the hall and on the stairs had been put out. They climbed through the darkness, Koenig holding the flickering flare. When they came to the landing, Koenig tapped on the old man’s door and called his name, but there was no answer. He called again but there wasn’t a sound from the room.

He glanced at Stefan, then pushed on the door; it opened.

The room was cold and dark. Jacob sat in his chair with his head tipped forward. He looked as though he were asleep. Koenig held the flare higher and said his name, but Jacob didn’t move. So he put his hand under the old man’s chin and lifted his face.
Then they saw that, tied tightly around Jacob’s neck, was a length of cut cord. He was not asleep at all.

He was dead.

Katta had seen dead men before. She had even seen men who’d been hanged. She’d told herself that they were only asleep and had looked away. When she closed her eyes at night, she’d tried not to remember their faces, or the blood, but no matter how much she tried, she always did. She didn’t want to look at Jacob now, but she couldn’t help it. He sat in his dirty chair, in the flickering light, his head lolling back on his neck.

She couldn’t say what it was, but there was something that dragged her eyes back to him and made her look.

Koenig closed the shutters. He told Stefan to stand by the door and keep watch. As he did so, Mathias slowly shook his head. The room about him had suddenly begun to make sense. It felt as though
a blanket of sleep was being lifted away. Either Tashka’s drug must have run its course, or he was becoming more used to it – because Koenig had given him enough to make him sleep for a week. He blinked and stared at Jacob, not realizing yet who it was.

‘Who is that man?’ he said slowly.

The sound of his voice made Katta turn round. She could see in the flickering light that his skin was grey and there was a sheen to it, but he was awake. If they had to run now, then he might be able to run too.

He wasn’t looking at her though. He was looking at Jacob.

‘Why is he pointing?’ he said.

Katta turned to Jacob again; then she realized that was it – the thing that had made her look. She just hadn’t understood what she was seeing until Mathias said it.

Jacob had one hand across his chest. But his other hand was on the arm of the chair and that was what was wrong. Strangled men would claw with both hands at a rope around their neck, dig their fingers into it until their heels drummed on the floor as the last scraps of breath were throttled out of them.

But not Jacob.

He could have pulled at the cord with only one thumbless hand because the other was gripping tightly onto the arm of the chair. Tightly, that is, save for one finger.

‘He’s pointing,’ she said.

Koenig turned round and looked at her, then at Jacob.

‘At the wall,’ she said. ‘Look. He’s pointing.’

And he was.

Koenig bent over the dead man and followed the line that his finger made, but there was nothing to see.

‘Maybe it’s inside the wall,’ said Katta.

He knelt down, moving the flare to and fro, the better to see. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s something scratched here. A name and a date – two dates. It’s a woman’s name and two dates.’

‘Maybe it’s when she lived here,’ said Mathias. He’d screwed his eyes closed again, but he understood what was happening.

Koenig shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They are big dates. This must be when she lived and when she died.’

He bent closer. The name – Gelein Merlevede –
was so lightly scratched in the plaster that unless you knew it was there, you wouldn’t see it at all.

‘There’s more,’ he said.

He narrowed his eyes and moved the flame nearer. For several moments he didn’t say anything. Then he looked up at Katta. ‘It says,
My loving wife Gelein Merlevede
.’

‘What’s that mean?’ she said.

This time, Koenig smiled, but he didn’t answer.

‘How do we know it’s to do with him?’ said Mathias.

At the door, Stefan hissed them quiet. Something had moved on the landing, but it was only a cat.

Koenig lowered his voice. ‘Because it’s what he was pointing at when he died,’ he said.

Straightening and standing up, Koenig began searching about. He picked up a dirty spoon from the table and scratched at the wall with its edge until there was nothing of the writing to be seen.

‘Maybe he was trying to tell us,’ he said. ‘Or maybe he was just trying to save his own life – he told me that’s what knowing about the other piece of paper was worth. But whoever killed him didn’t see it, or the writing wouldn’t be there. They’d have scratched it off.’

‘What does it mean?’ said Katta.

‘It means that Gelein Merlevede has the other piece of paper.’

She looked at him blankly.

‘It’s an inscription on a gravestone,’ said Koenig. ‘Find her grave, and you find the other part of Meiserlann’s paper.’

‘Is that all there is to it?’ asked Mathias.

‘No,’ said Koenig.

He moved Stefan aside and, opening the door, looked out into the dark of the landing, holding the flare up so that he could see the stairs above and below.

‘You have to do what Jacob didn’t do,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ said Mathias.

Koenig turned and looked at him. ‘Stay alive.’

They went through the dark, empty streets, back to the inn, Katta and Mathias jumping at every shadow. When Koenig shut the door of the room, he put a chair behind it, so that it couldn’t be opened. Then he told them to sleep – it was already the dead hours of the night. He blew out the candles and settled himself into a corner. By the moonlight through the long window, Katta could just make out his shape,
see the blue glint on the barrel of the pistol he held in his lap. She was so tired. She tried to think of good things happening to her – of finding riches and treasures, of the procession of the golden angel with bells ringing and people in the crowd, but all she could see when she shut her eyes was the face of the Duke, and of Jacob, dead in his dirty chair. As sleep opened its arms for her, it was their faces that followed her into its darkness and filled every part of her dreams.

‘Wake up!’ said Koenig.

He was shaking her. She blinked. The room was full of morning light. Mathias and Stefan were eating bread at the big table.

‘You needed sleep,’ he said. ‘Now you must get up. There are things to do.’

‘Like what?’ she said.

He didn’t answer her. He was impatient to be out of the room, she could see that. He picked up the saddlebags and strapped them shut. Then he took the bread that hadn’t already been eaten and pushed it into his coat pocket.

‘Come. Now,’ he said.

Stefan picked up his bag.

‘Where are we going?’ said Katta.

‘You ask too many questions,’ said Koenig.

‘It’s what you do when people don’t tell you nothin’,’ she said.

But he didn’t pay her any attention. He checked the pistols and, putting one of them inside his coat, slipped the other beneath the strap of a saddlebag.

‘You already know,’ he said when he’d finished.

Then she remembered Gelein Merlevede and the writing on the wall. ‘We’re going to find a grave?’ she said, and shuddered.

‘No,’ said Koenig, and only then did he look at her. ‘We’re going to find a doctor.’

He led them down to the stables where Razor was tethered, and put the saddlebags on the ground beneath the horse’s head, then covered them over with straw. The stableboy pretended not to watch, but he did it too casually, and Koenig saw.

‘Don’t even think of touching them,’ he said. He ran his hand along the glossy side of the big horse. ‘He kicked the last man who was stupid enough to do that.’ He put his face close to that of the boy. ‘They never found one half of his head.’

The boy grinned. Then, uncertain of the joke, he
looked from Koenig to the huge horse. It turned its head and he could see the wild white of its eye and then realized that, just maybe, Koenig hadn’t been joking.

Koenig patted him on the cheek. ‘Just leave them where they are,’ he said menacingly, and gave the boy a coin. ‘Another one,’ he added, ‘if you are still alive when I come back.’

Katta hadn’t believed Koenig the day before when he’d said he’d take Mathias to a doctor. She’d thought he’d only said it to keep her quiet until he had the chance to meet Jacob again. But she was wrong.

The doctor was a nervous young man, fresh from the University Medical School. His treatment room was the best he could manage on an empty pocket. Mathias sat grey-faced and shirtless on the examining table, his legs dangling over the edge. He made small keening sounds as the doctor ran his hands over the places that hurt.

‘This boy should be in a hospital,’ the doctor said.

‘We don’t have that choice,’ answered Koenig. ‘What can you do for him?’

‘His ribs are broken. He is not well.’

‘I think we already know that,’ said Koenig coldly.
‘I asked,
What can you do for him?
’

Koenig had an unsettling effect on people. It was those hard, unwavering grey eyes. The doctor might have been a rabbit in front of a wolf.

‘I can stitch him,’ he began hesitantly. ‘Pull the broken ribs straight – they are against his lung; that is why he is so grey. I can strap him.’

‘Will that make him any better?’ said Koenig.

‘Yes,’ said the doctor uncertainly. Then, more confidently, ‘Yes, it will. But he needs to rest.’

Koenig shook his head.

The doctor didn’t seem to know what to say next, whether to argue the point or not, but Koenig stood, hard-faced, and said nothing. In the end the doctor let out a long breath.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Koenig and smiled. He managed to look even more dangerous when he did.

Mathias watched uncomfortably as the doctor opened a cupboard and, laying out a tray, began to make his things ready.

‘If you die in this city,’ said Koenig, ‘who knows where you are buried?’

The doctor put the tray down. ‘Your family would, I suppose,’ he said hesitantly.

Koenig frowned impatiently.

‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ said the doctor quickly. ‘You mean records. Well, that depends where you are buried – which quarter of the city. They each have their own records.’

‘How many cemeteries are there?’ said Koenig.

‘Four? Five? Not counting the crypts – you know, beneath the churches. And the ossuaries – but that would only be bones.’

‘How many crypts?’

The young man blew out his cheeks. ‘Dozens,’ he said, shaking his head.

Katta caught Koenig’s eye. ‘Where would you be buried,’ she said, ‘if you was to die near The Bear?’

‘I don’t think I know where that is,’ said the doctor.

He wasn’t used to being questioned by scruffy girls, but Koenig saw at once what she meant.

‘Near the harbour,’ he said. ‘There’s a river and a bridge.’

‘Oh,’ said the doctor. He picked up his tray again and checked that he had the right instruments on it. ‘That – would – be,’ he said slowly, ‘Saints Maximilian and Mary. Or one of the crypts,’ he added. ‘Yes. Maximilian and Mary.’

He put his hand on Mathias’s good shoulder and smiled at him, then looked up at Koenig. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘You need to hold the boy.’

‘You are very clever,’ said Koenig when they were in the street again.

‘Stands to reason,’ said Katta. ‘If it was Jacob what hid it, he wouldn’t have gone far, would he, see? So it has to be the nearest one.’

She felt very pleased with herself. She might not know what was going to happen next, but she was a part of it now, and Koenig might need her yet.

But she wouldn’t have felt so pleased if at that moment she’d turned round and seen the look on Stefan’s face. He was thinking that he could have been clever like her too. That he could have thought where Jacob had hidden the paper, if he’d been given the chance. But he hadn’t, and it was Katta who had taken it from him.

Always Katta.

Well, he could see to that.

Mathias looked more grey than he had done before, but the doctor said that was to be expected. His shoulder had been cleaned and stitched. The
broken ribs pulled, painfully, back into their right place with a piece of wire. Now he had to heal: all that he needed was rest. It was hardly what he was going to get, though.

They walked across the city, through the winding alleys, until they found the cemetery of the Saints Maximilian and Mary. There was a high stone wall about it and it was closed with heavy iron gates. Koenig pushed the gates open. There was snow and ice on the paths. It was a soulless place. There was not a sound. People would not come here other than to bury their dead, or be buried. There were no noises of the living city – of people or barking dogs. It was as if the sounds had died too. There were only the dead here, and they did not speak.

They stood together in the cold, looking at the rows of snow-covered graves and tombs. Some had iron railings around them; others were broken and fallen down. There was a chill wind. Katta shivered. She didn’t like graves – didn’t want to die and lie with the worms beneath all that suffocating earth.